


Recovery

by SweetSinger2010



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25682368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetSinger2010/pseuds/SweetSinger2010
Summary: Ahsoka grieves Anakin. Hera listens.
Relationships: Hera Syndulla/Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 1
Kudos: 35





	Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s another hot mess for you! I started a Rebels re-watch on my own and a Clone Wars re-watch with my brother and my mind is continually drawn to Ahsoka. She lived through some stuff. And the moment when she realizes what became of Anakin has always broken my heart. I can’t believe she handled that with as much poise and serenity as Rebels showed us. Here’s my take on what happened later. It’s been a hot minute since I read the “Ahsoka” novel and I haven’t watched TCW season 7 yet (I know, I know) so some details may be off. Set immediately after “The Siege of Lothal.”

Recovery

Hera woke at 0315, unsure of what roused her from sleep. Panel lights from her workbench bathed her room in a dim glow. She glanced in the floor where Sabine lay in a makeshift bunk. The young girl’s breathing was soft and steady, fingers loosely curled around her blaster’s grip. She was sleeping deeply, as Hera should have been. With a sigh, she lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes, willing herself to feel drowsy. She wound up staring at the ceiling instead. She felt more wide awake than she had at midday—

And what a day it had been.

Her heart ached to think that they’d left Lothal for good now; she’d always felt drawn to the planet and its people. So many things had happened for her crew there, both good and bad. And what about Ezra? Helping Lothal was his passion, and now he had no choice but to give it up—for what? To run from a Sith lord?

Hera’s breath caught. Now _there_ was something.

Ahsoka.

The Togruta’s strangled cry still rang in Hera’s ears. She, Kanan, and Ezra had all felt the presence of the Sith lord, had been oppressed by the darkness he harbored, but Ahsoka’s reaction was visceral. Painful.

Personal.

Again, Hera sighed. Ahsoka had asked to spend the night on the _Ghost_ , and she hadn’t thought anything of it; it wasn’t the first time that the trio of Jedi had sequestered themselves, talking late into the night. Now Hera wondered if maybe Ahsoka just didn’t want to be alone.

She bit her lip, guilt creeping in as she realized she hadn’t checked on Ahsoka. If any of her crew members had been in distress the way she had been, Hera wouldn’t have been able to rest without finding a way to listen or soothe or help in some way. For so long, Ahsoka had seemed mysterious and untouchable—Fulcrum. Just a symbol. A callsign, a shadow at a drop-site, a garbled voice on the other end of a transmission.

Not someone with a heart in pain and a war-scarred past, just like her crew.

Restless, Hera slipped out of bed.

On auto-pilot, her legs took her to the galley to make caf, because why not get a jump on the day’s caffeine intake at 0400? She didn’t bother turning on the light as she shuffled in; she’d made caf a hundred times with her eyes literally closed, and there was a little light coming in from the common room anyway. She grabbed the pot and took it to the sink.

Movement and a shadowy figure caught her eye and her pulse skyrocketed as she turned, battle-ready. The caf pot clattered in the sink as she instinctively reached for the blaster she wasn’t carrying. She stood empty-handed and confused. “ _What_ in Corellian hells?”

A sigh. “I’m sorry, Hera. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Hera blinked in the darkness, processing the voice she’d heard, clearly thick with tears. “Ahsoka?” She stepped toward the door and flipped the light switch, squinting as her eyes adjusted. “What are you doing?”

“Tonight wasn’t my night for sleeping,” she answered with a small shrug. “Yours either, by the looks of it.”

Hera relaxed, trying to normalize the situation. “That’s the case often enough. I’m used to it. Chopper isn’t; he never powers down in the same place two nights in a row. He doesn’t like me getting him up for middle-of-the-night ship maintenance.”

Ahsoka smiled wanly. “I can’t say that I blame him.”

“Me either.”

The attempt at levity fell flat and silence was heavy as Hera went back to her task. Caf pot in her hand once more, she turned on the tap and let the water run for a few seconds, thinking. She stole a glance over her shoulder. Ahsoka was still sitting at the table, eyes fixed on some distant point, face pale, posture rigid. Hera knew that look. She set the pot aside and filled the tea kettle instead.

“I thought some herbal tea would help me get back to sleep,” she lied. “Would you like some?”

Ahsoka considered, and then nodded. “Thank you, yes.”

Minutes later, a spiced, fragrant smell warmed the galley. Hera prepared two mugs of the brew, a famed Nubian blend, sweetened with Felucian honey. As she sat one in front of Ahsoka, the Togruta’s expression flickered and her eyes filled with tears.

“I’ve had this tea a hundred times,” she said faintly. “It was Padmé’s favorite.”

Hera’s brows drew together. “Padmé?” The name sounded familiar. “Amidala? The senator?”

“She was a friend. Not just mine—my master’s. And Master Obi-Wan’s.” The statement was layered, loaded, begging for explanation, but Ahsoka didn’t go on.

Hera studied her face. Pain was etched in every line. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. Dark circles lay beneath them. She was still young—thirty-one or two, maybe? Not much older than Hera herself—but at this moment, she had the look of someone who’d suffered too many things in her lifetime and was near her breaking point. She looked nothing like the self-assured Fulcrum Hera had known for years.

Hera reached across the table and gently placed her hand over Ahsoka’s. “What happened out there today? When you and Kanan sensed that Sith lord…it affected you.”

Ahsoka blinked, tears falling. Her mouth and opened and closed and opened again. “I—we—” She struggled to keep her voice even. “After Order 66, I ran. All of us did, any who survived.”

That was a non-answer, but Hera nodded. “I know Kanan did.”

“There wasn’t time for anything else. Grieving…that was a luxury. Stopping to think about it was a luxury. Wondering what you could have done differently was a luxury.”

“One you couldn’t afford,” Hera supplied quietly. “Not if you wanted to live.”

Ahsoka shook her head. “Not if I wanted to live.” She paused. “It was like that for the first few years. And then when the galaxy had forgotten the Jedi and things were ‘safer,’ there was work to be done.”

Hera heard the subtext: _I’ve never stopped to grieve what I lost._ “You compartmentalized in order to keep going. We’ve all done that in some way or another. And you were so young when it happened.” The real question was why had encountering the Sith lord brought everything flooding back? Instinct cautioned Hera not to ask.

“I could have done something.” Ahsoka’s eyes were distant. Her cooling tea was between her hands, almost like she was clinging to the mug for dear life. “If I’d stayed. I could have done something.”

“Stayed?”

“I left the Jedi Order,” she explained flatly. “There was a bombing at the Temple. I was framed and taken to trial. Anakin—my master—fought to get me exonerated.”

“And you were?” Hera was stunned, but she managed to keep it off her face. Ahsoka’s master was _Anakin Skywalker?_

“I was.” Ahsoka nodded. Her chin raised. “The Jedi Council offered me the rank of Jedi Knight; they said I’d successfully weathered my trial. But I…I felt they’d sold me out. Not just that, but the war—everything was all wrong. I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t do it anymore.”

Hera waited, sensing there was more.

Ahsoka took a shallow breath. “My master understood, but my leaving took a toll on him. It was like dominoes falling after that. I—” She choked on a sob. “I should have stayed. I could have stopped it. He’d still be—and Obi-Wan would still be alive. And Padmé.”

She buried her face in her hands and cried bitterly, like it was the first time she’d allowed herself to break down. Maybe it was.

Hera swallowed past the lump in her own throat. “You don’t know that,” she whispered. “You could have been killed right along with the rest of them.” She didn’t know what the circumstances were, but she instinctually knew that if Ahsoka had stayed with her master and the Order, the tragedy would have been compounded by her presence.

Tears streaming, Ahsoka looked up. “I _should_ have been killed right along with the rest of them,” she said bitterly. “Then I wouldn’t have to—”

She stopped short, clamping her mouth shut.

Hera’s brows scrunched in confusion. “Wouldn’t have to what?”

Fulcrum’s façade fell into place, piece by piece, as Ahsoka wiped her tears away. “I’ve said too much.”

Hera shook her head, bewildered. “That Sith lord today—did he have something to do with what happened to your master all those years ago?” Ahsoka gave a stricken glance and Hera felt nauseous as the truth snapped into place. “ _Gods_ ,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Fresh tears fell. “Me too.”

They didn’t talk about it. Neither of them verbalized the terrible thing that Ahsoka had discovered and Hera now knew. Hera wanted as little of the truth as possible; she didn’t want Kanan to pick up on it somehow. She knew that the truth was Ahsoka’s, anyway, and only hers to tell. She knew that in the morning, they would pretend this middle-of-the-night meeting never happened. She knew Ahsoka was right: grieving the past was a luxury they could ill afford, and there was work to be done.

She also knew that there were some traumas too difficult to process alone, and that recovery was sometimes a little easier with someone’s hand to hold.

They sat on the bench, shoulder to shoulder, until Ahsoka’s tears and grief were spent. For that length of time, they weren’t Fulcrum and Spectre. They were friends.


End file.
